The government will ask France to hand over confidential information about the kickback and murder scandal involving Taiwan's 1991 purchase of Lafayette-class frigates, in exchange for settling out of court a massive lawsuit related to the scandal, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
In 2003 the Taiwanese navy filed a suit in the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris against France Thomson-CSF (now known as Thales), demanding that the firm return US$99 million -- an amount the Navy claims is equivalent to the kickbacks the company received during the purchase of six frigates from France.
Members of a special prosecutorial panel investigating the high-profile scandal told the Chinese-language newspaper the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) that probes had revealed evidence of irregularities in the deal, and public pressure was mounting on the French government to resolve the scandal. Since Taiwan seemed likely to win the lawsuit against Thales, the French government has softened its attitude and now hopes to negotiate a settlement with Taiwan out of court, the panel members said in the report.
The panel members told the Liberty Times they would like to ask the French government to declassify a confidential archive about the warships deal as a conditions for settling the suit.
The French government has four times rejected French judges' requests to declassify the confidential archive, citing national security.
Meanwhile, Tu Cheng Chun-chu (
"Tu will return to Taiwan tonight and she is planning to say something of importance about the scandal, which might astonish Taiwan, China and France," he said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
In reaction to the story run by the Liberty Times yesterday that said that there had been progress in the case in recent days, Ker said yesterday that the Lafayette scandal was the largest scandal in Taiwan's history and it was imperative that the case be resolved.
"As far as I know, France has found a lot of new evidence and its decoding of this case is beyond our imagination. But recently, people in Taiwan have paid too much attention to the corruption scandal involving President Chen Shui-bian's (
In response to Ker, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Pan Wei-kang said that the DPP's was bringing up the Lafayette scandal at this time in order to shift the focus away from the government's recent scandals and to try to influence the year-end Taipei mayoral election.
Pan referred to the impact of the scandal on the KMT's Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Long-bin (
"We also hope that the Lafayette scandal will be cleared up as soon as possible, but the government shouldn't regard the investigation into the scandal as a means to protect itself and attack opposition parties," Pan said.
But Ker later dismissed such accusations, saying they were "immoral."
Also yesterday, People First Party Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) appealed to the government to cooperate with the French government to clear up the scandal.
"We often hear information leaked from the government that it has made a breakthrough in the investigation, but then that turns out not to be the case," Chang said. "We hope the information isn't false again this time."
According to the Liberty Times report, the panel said that declassifying the French archive could help it to come up with a comprehensive list of Taiwanese officials suspected of involvement in the kickback scandal.
In April, Thales filed a lawsuit demanding US$200 million in compensation from the navy for the alleged damage inflicted on the company's reputation by allegations of massive corruption in the purchase deal.
Thales insist there were no kickbacks involved in the deal, and says that Taiwanese judicial authorities have not yet produced evidence to back up allegations of corruption.
A special prosecutorial panel investigating the high-profile kickback scandal has scrutinized a large number of Swiss court files believed to be related to the kickback scandal.
The files were released by the Swiss government in November last year.
They include information about 46 bank accounts in the name of Andrew Wang (
The files also include details on a number of previously unexposed overseas bank accounts related to the US$2.8 billion Lafayette deal, as well as information about account transactions.
But the panel has not revealed what criminal evidence they have found in the files.
Andrew Wang fled the country following the death of navy Captain Yin, who was murdered in late 1993. Yin is widely believed to have been about to blow the whistle on colleagues who were taking kickbacks from the deal.
Wang has been charged in absentia with murder, corruption, money laundering and fraud.
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